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On Monday, 37 organizations signed an open letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, urging McConnell to reject any poison pill language in budget legislation that would prohibit the Securities and Exchange Commission from strengthening corporate disclosure laws by requiring transparency of secret political spending. A proposed secret-money rider is a sticking point in Senate budget negotiations, as lawmakers debate a continuing resolution which must pass by the end of September to keep the government open.

Last week, we were in New York City, where the United Nations General Assembly spent an entire day discussing antibiotic resistance, “the biggest threat to modern medicine.” Experts estimate that more than 700,000 people worldwide die from antibiotic-resistant infections each year, including 23,000 in the United States—a number that could grow to 10 million globally by 2050.

Representative Mark Pocan (D-WI) introduced H.R. 6126, the Corporate Transparency and Accountability (CTA) Act which addresses rampant corporate tax evasion. The bill will require multinational corporations to provide the Securities and Exchange Commission with income and tax information on a country-by-country basis, and will make that offshore financial information available to the public.

When we hear about the influence of money in politics, we often hear about it at the presidential level. Clinton accepted a donation from Y, or Trump’s top contributor said X. And there’s good reason for that: mega-donors are in the driver’s seat when it comes to presidential fundraising. But when it comes to money in politics, that’s not the whole picture. It’s not even close.

In the wake of the recently-announced Yahoo data breach -- apparently the largest security breach ever, exposing the personal information of 500 million consumers -- PIRG offers consumer tips, demands that Yahoo provide free security freezes to affected consumers who could be at risk of "phishing" schemes to commit fraud on existing accounts or open new fraudulent accounts. We also ask: Why did it take Yahoo two years to notify the public?

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Today, we applaud the Department of Defense for its proposal to expand the protections of the 2007 Military Lending Act against predatory financial practices aimed at servicemembers and veterans and their families and that threaten the nation's military preparedness. The proposal also closes loopholes exploited by payday lenders, auto title pawn companies and other lenders to evade the law's intended protections.

Attorney General Eric Holder's Department of Justice negotiated many large settlements to resolve charges of corporate wrongdoing, but he missed an opportunity to leave behind a legacy of increased transparency and public protections against companies writing off settlements as tax deductions.

"Holder faced criticism from consumer advocates, too. He was accused of failing to prosecute bankers responsible for the mortgage meltdown in 2008 — and when he reached civil settlements with major Wall Street institutions, he often allowed them to write off the judgments as business expenses, said Michelle Surka of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group."

U.S. PIRG and other consumer advocates, joined by pediatricians and pediatric gastroenterologists, today applauded the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s (CPSC) vote to address the hazards posed by high powered magnets. Children who swallow two or more magnets are at risk of developing serious injuries such as small holes in the stomach and intestines, intestinal blockage, blood poisoning, and even death.

Today, President Barack Obama issued an Executive Order – Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria. While the order takes several important steps necessary to control the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, it misses the opportunity to call for critical reforms in the agricultural sector that are essential to protect public health.

Today the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau took an important first step toward protecting consumers from mandatory arbitration clauses, which are boilerplate sentences in bank account and other contracts that crush consumer legal rights. ... Meanwhile, the New York Times follows up on a lawsuit by the Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson against a medical debt collector that blocks and tackles consumers trying to get through hospital emergency room doors. But it gets better. That debt collector just happens to be owned by the same hedge fund that owned a supposedly neutral (not) forced arbitration mill known as NAF and favored by the big credit card companies. ... Also today, the World Privacy Forum announced updates to its helpful pages on medical identity theft.

The American Petroleum Institute has a new public image campaign: http://whoownsbigoil.org. The purpose of this website, presumably, is to convince us that if we raise taxes on hugely profitable corporations we will only be hurting ourselves. Why? Because we are all shareholders of those corporations and when they are taxed we suffer.

While I am skeptical of API’s conclusions, it’s right to say we own the oil companies. In fact, shareholders across the country are demanding accountability and disclosure from the corporations that they rightfully own and the effort could be the key to slowing the flow of corporate money in the 2012 election.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has announced a "thought starter" beta test version of a tool to make it easier to calculate college debt burdens. "The goal is to give students and their families an easy-to-understand view of how their decisions today impact your debt burden after graduation." Meanwhile, banks and an auto finance company have confirmed that the CFPB is investigating both the marketing of overdraft protection schemes and the practices of "buy here, pay here" auto dealers.